Established in 1994 to preserve the audio-visual histories of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation maintains one of the largest video digital libraries in the world: the Visual History Archive (VHA).

Roma Interviews

The USC Shoah Foundation has a collection of 407 video interviews with Roma survivors of persecution by the Nazis and their Allies. They were gathered in 18 countries and in 16 languages between November 1995 and November 1999.

The interviewees, 185 men and 222 women, were predominantly from Poland and Ukraine and gave their testimonies mostly in the Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian languages; a smaller group of testimonies are from western and southern Europe. Around half of the interviewees report that they led nomadic lives before, during, and after the war. Over three quarters relate that they were from Romani-speaking communities; 24 testimonies are exclusively in the Romani language. They describe their families, traditions, Christian and Muslim religious observances, relations between different Roma groups, as well as relations with the local population.

Nazi and Axis persecution of Roma during World War II took various forms. Around 100 Roma survivors were prisoners of camps in Poland—including the “Zigeunerlager” in Auschwitz-Birkenau—as well as Austria, Germany, Ukraine, Latvia, and other countries. Thirty eight discuss their experiences in ghettos in Ukraine especially, but also in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Forty one were witnesses to executions; for example, the five accounts of a mass shooting in Aleksandrovka (Smolensk oblast, Russia) make this the most witnessed single execution in Russia among the Institute’s testimonies.

Many interviewees talk about continuing persecution after the war and describe the efforts of various governments to force the Roma to establish permanent settlements and to participate in state-led integration schemes.